States under Globalisation

Conference of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in honour of President Herzog’s 75th birthday

Berlin, 24 April 2009

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

May I, first of all, say how much honoured I feel in having this privilege to speak to this assembly today. I have had the privilege of knowing President Herzog already for a number of years and I am one of the many members of his fan club. His achievements are known to all of us. He himself is an embodiment of the theme of this conference.

In the course of the past twenty years the world, which during the many decades of the Cold War was in many respects stagnated, has undergone and indeed is undergoing a rapid process of transformation. We know where we are coming from but we cannot yet see the consequences of changes that already have taken place. Much less can we see what to expect.

In the traditional setting of things the roles between the states were fairly clear cut. There was East and there was West. There was South and there was North. These were more political and economic rather than geographical concepts. Today such concepts are useless. Germany is the last country– and this very city of Berlin even more so – where there is a need to emphasize this. So we know what was but where are we going?

There are some things we are well advised to expect. One of them is a global new deal both in economic and political terms. It may be even more significant revolution than what was the dissolution of colonial empires after World War II. We can already see clearly that new actors, actors that only some twenty years ago were the ones who had to adapt themselves to the decisions made without their consent are today key players whenever global affairs are discussed.

In this great play new actors in new roles mean a revision of the rules of the play. The system of global governance which was created in San Francisco in 1945 has never really worked the way it was envisioned to work. It was based on the presupposition that the major powers would be willing and able to unite themselves to safeguard peace and prosperity in freedom all over the world. That was a noble target but the realities of international life were not there for achieving it.

The discussions and negotiations on how to reform the system of United Nations and it´s numerous specialized agencies have been going on for tens of years. Again the ambition to transform the system so that it would better reflect the changes that have taken place in the world is laudable. But we see very little progress in that endeavour. The reasons are fairly obvious. As the cards were dealt in San Francisco those who got a good hand are determined to keep their cards. No new deal is going to be easy.

This is one of the reasons why many things which are on the United Nations agenda, in keeping with it´s charter, are dealt with elsewhere. Coming from a small country I cannot but worry this development. Groups, such as G-7 or G-8 or even G-20 are self appointed masters of the universe. It is true that they represent a very large share of the world population and even a larger share of the world economy. They are, in theory, consultative ad hoc groups, without formal procedures or rules, even without secretariats, but they are nevertheless bodies that wield great power.

One could say, with a good deal of justification, that this phenomenon is unavoidable. Since the formal and official bodies created for global governance are incapable of doing the job, it has to be done by those who are ready and willing. In other words – who have the power? This shows how important it would be that the world community would pull itself together so that existing bodies, based on international law, could be reformed so that they could play their proper role. Much to my regret I have to say that this too may prove to be more a dream rather than a realistic state of affairs.

But let us not lose all hope. There are other developments which may fill some of the gaps that exist in present and existing systems of global governance. One of them – perhaps the most important of them – is our common union, the European Union. Today we face an inconvenient situation with our union as the Lisbon treaty is not yet in force. But the prospects for a successful completion of the process are there. The new rules of our common endeavours would be an important step forward in making the union a true instrument for the advancement of the goals that our nations share.

At the same time as the European Union gains new competences and plays an ever increasing role in our daily lives we see much criticism of it. As President Herzog has stated
“people have an ever increasing feeling that something is going wrong: that an untransparent, complex, mammoth institution has evolved: divorced from practical problems and national traditions; grabbing ever greater competences and areas of power; that democratic controlling mechanisms are failing – in brief, that it cannot go on like this.”

This feeling may be, at least in part, the explanation to the fact that too few of our citizens bother to vote in the elections for the European Parliament. We will soon see if there is any new development in this issue. The trend has been worrisome. While in 1979 63 per cent of those eligible to vote did cast their votes that number was down in 2004 being only 45,6 per cent.
We Finns did even worse – only 41,1 per cent made good use of their privilege to vote. In opinion polls it has become rather clear that very many people have very vague ideas of the role of the European Parliament. They think that it is a distant political body of little relevance in their everyday life. That has probably been true earlier on but it is certainly not true today. The same people who complain that the various institutions of the European Union have too much power fail to use their own power in order to influence those institutions. Here there is an obvious need for a great effort to enlighten the voters.

I think that the process of European integration has now reached such dimensions that we cannot any longer be content with ordinary campaigns of information. The substance in being a citizen of the European Union is a matter that deserves to be an integral part of the curricula of our schools. We insist that before we naturalize new citizens they must give proof of understanding what their political rights and duties are. For that special training is organised in many countries. We should do the same for our citizens by incorporating special courses in our national educational systems.

With the new treaty the powers of the European Union will get a new dimension as foreign affairs become more a matter of the union than has been before. A more robust machinery for the execution of common policies calls for a better understanding of the issues we face. That, again, is a serious challenge. Much more than what has been so far needs to be done. One example of how to approach such issues in an informed way and how to disseminate information to those who can spread it to larger audiences is the founding of the European Council on Foreign Affairs. It has an important function in making available, in a condensed but clear form, basic knowledge and understanding of the most important current issues. This is also a big challenge to the popular media.

In the media what we see of foreign affairs is often focused on politics of conflicts. Most of those violent conflicts take place outside Europe. In many of them we are confronted with adversaries whose beliefs and whose cultural values differ from our own. We fail to understand the driving forces that make people to take such great risks, even self sacrifice, to achieve something that for us is nothing but bigotry.

Do we risk a global cultural confrontation – a clash of civilizations is a question many of us are asking as we contemplate the future. Many conflicts are, at least on the face, indeed conflicts where the adversaries represent different civilizations. President Herzog has dedicated a good deal of thinking to this theme. It deserves all the attention we can give to it. My answer to the question is that a confrontation need not be the case. It is, in a way, a highly paradoxical situation that at a time when global communication of ideas and information has reached an entirely new level we would regress back to an age where we would be unable to live peacefully side by side learning from each others cultures, not confronting them.

What, then, is the role of sovereignty in a world where both regional and global integration, both political and economic, advances with considerable speed? I think that we see several rather different processes occurring at the same time. One of them is technology driven. The integrating force of information technology is a case in point. Wherever we travel we see the same news, in whatever hotel lobby we sit, we hear the same background music and nowhere can we escape the messages that creep into our pockets as the mobile phone insists on our attention. All this is, indeed, integration. With the technology becoming ever more powerful and at the same time less costly this revolution penetrates even the poorest of villages. It is the single most potent instrument of integration.

Another process is related to transportation. People are on the move like never before. The relative lower cost of travel has made it possible for young people living in Thailand to come to Finland in the autumn to pick wild berries in our forests for Finns as they chose not to go to that trouble themselves. The fact that more people travel and they cover larger distances has, no doubt, an impact on their world view. They become aware of the fact that things could be different even in their own countries as they have the experience of other solutions to common problems.

Where are these developments leading us? Are we going to have much more cultural uniformity and are we slowly losing our national characteristics? We absorb in our various languages English words and idioms without even noticing it. We change our eating habits so that there really is a good reason to speak of mcdonaldization of our world . No wonder that many who cherish traditions get worried. Does a similar process take place in the world of our beliefs and values? How are they going to change as we are more and more exposed to competing interpretations of what is true or what is right?

It seems to me that such worries are grossly exaggerated. At one end of the scale there are those who fear that there is going to be a clash of civilizations and at the other end there is the fear that there is going to be an amalgamation of cultures. I think both are conclusions based on fairly superficial phenomena, things that do not really change the way we think or how we feel as it comes to matters of real value.

Be is as it may, it is obvious that the multifarious new interfaces we create superimpose on us a need for a greater degree of better common governance. Awareness of this need has been highlighted by the present economic downturn in the world economy. We see similar problems in very different economies. Countries who have managed their economies fairly well have not been spared from serious chocks. Those chocks are like a tsunami which advanced with great speed and causes much havoc.
The reason is that through links of finance and trade we are so interdependent that economic worries in far away countries hit us like a sledgehammer.

The old institutions, such as those founded at Bretton Woods already in 1943, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, have had an important role to play. Today, however, they are no longer up to the much more demanding tasks they face. There is an urgent need for reforming them not only by granting them more financial resources but also by recognizing the very real political changes that have taken place in their membership. New actors, powerful and very much aware of it, now participate and they claim their fair share of influence in the institutions. Those claims cannot be resisted if the institutions are to remain relevant in the new constellation of the world.

The serious problem with these intergovernmental institutions is that most citizens of our countries consider them to be far outside their reach. They cannot be influenced as their activities are poorly understood. It is true that those institutions are under the guidance of the national governments which form the decision making bodies of the institutions. In this way they are answerable to the voters. But this is a long path, so long that the end of it is beyond the horizon and cannot be seen. It would, however, be cheap demagoguery to maintain that direct civic control could introduce an element of democratic control into their operations. The very nature of their operations is such that it has to be handled by experts.

“All politics is local politics” is a familiar saying. But that is often meant that voters make their decisions on the basis of how they think that the policies have a bearing upon their own lives – in the short term. For political purposes the planning period is, as we all now, no longer than up to the next elections. That is a similar approach as in business to focus only on the bottom line for the next quarterly report. Such an approach has proven to be fatal in business. It is going to be fatal in politics, as well.

We simply cannot think in those terms in a world where issues that know no national borders or ignore spheres of jurisdiction, such as the climate change, nuclear proliferation, or a financial crisis. Today we have to learn to understand that all politics is global politics. All our political decisions may have global implications. Such simple things as how we heat our homes, what type of cars we drive, what are our food preferences, all of them have global implications. Not necessarily in the short run but certainly over time. Over such a time frame that it is relevant for both us and our children.

There is no denial that these developments mean tension between the traditional concept of a nation state and the concept of a global community. The nation state is a familiar concept to most people. It´s working is fairly well understood. It´s institutions are part of our everyday life. Those who represent citizens are more or less familiar actors. The legitimacy of the nation state is, in particular here in Europe, quite strong.

As people realize that many decisions influencing their daily lives and their future are taken outside this familiar system, no wonder that they feel uneasy. The pace of change has been so fast that an adaptation to this new state of affairs has been too much. Against this background it is easy to understand that there are many who take a suspicious view of the changes. They question the legitimacy of the new order.

It is, however, impossible to return to the old order. It too had it´s weaknesses. In the modern world those weaknesses would be fatal. Due to technological development and – as Jürgen Habermas has stated, through political choices, we have accepted a system of liberalized trade, a free flow of capital and, in the European union, also free flow of labour. These changes have contributed greatly to the growth of our economies and thus increased our well being. But not without any costs. There has been an erosion of many things that have been part of our way of life.

Many of us know that a couple of decades ago many things that were within the reach of our domestic political system no longer are there. A common agricultural policy, a common trade policy, a common monetary policy, harmonisation of some taxes, common rules and regulations. These were earlier on the very heart of national politics. Today they are beyond it´s reach. No wonder that many people feel that they have a lesser possibility to influence developments. This may be one reason why participation in general elections has been on the decline in many European countries.

That poses serious challenges to our democratic form of government. The answer is, however, not to neglect political participation but to find new forms for making a contribution to it. Powerful NGOs are one way of influencing political decision making not only in national parliaments but also on the general level. Political parties may be less ideological than they were but they are certainly not irrelevant. We see more of political life which takes place outside the traditional institutions of government. As long as those forms are inclusive and open there should be no reason for denying them their new role.

These times are turbulent times. Turbulence as a natural phenomenon is poorly understood. As a social phenomenon perhaps even less understood. We simply do not know how the world is changing and what that change means for the future. This calls for keen observation of emerging phenomena and an alert mind so that undesirable developments do not surprise us. There is plenty of room for innovative research also in the social and societal field.

In these turbulent times much is required by those who lead their nations and shape their future. Good leaders are, however, not something we get without an enlightened and active electorate. Not only the leaders have great responsibilities. Each of us, as citizens and voter, we have the responsibility of making our voices heard. We share the responsibility of having good governance.
The need for that in these turbulent times is obvious. But it is less obvious that we will have it unless an enlightened and active citizenry insist on it.